Nation and international world news, politics and events | The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com
Colorado breaking news, sports, business, weather, entertainment.Fri, 09 Dec 2016 15:06:40 +0000en-UShourly30https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7http://www.denverpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/cropped-DP_bug_denverpost.jpg?w=32Nation and international world news, politics and events | The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com
3232111738712Heroin deaths in the U.S. rose 23 percent in one year, surpassing gun homicideshttp://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/09/overdose-deaths-in-us-2015/
http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/09/overdose-deaths-in-us-2015/#respondFri, 09 Dec 2016 14:25:59 +0000http://www.denverpost.com?p=2269979&preview_id=2269979NEW YORK — More than 50,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, the most ever.

The disastrous tally has been pushed to new heights by soaring abuse of heroin and prescription painkillers, a class of drugs known as opioids.

Heroin deaths rose 23 percent in one year, to 12,989, slightly higher than the number of gun homicides, according to government data released Thursday.

Deaths from synthetic opioids, including illicit fentanyl, rose 73 percent to 9,580. And prescription painkillers took the highest toll, but posted the smallest increase. Abuse of drugs like Oxycontin and Vicodin killed 17,536, an increase of 4 percent.

“I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this. Certainly not in modern times,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees death statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new numbers were part of the agency’s annual tally of deaths and death rates in 2015.

Overall, overdose deaths rose 11 percent last year, to 52,404. By comparison, the number of people who died in car crashes was 37,757, an increase of 12 percent. Gun deaths, including homicides and suicides, totaled 36,252, up 7 percent.

As part of its annual report the CDC also found that rates for 8 of the 10 leading causes of death rose last year, causing the nation’s life expectancy to go down for the first time in more than 20 years. Drug overdoses were a significant factor, but an unexpected increase in the death rate from heart disease, the nation’s No. 1 killer, was another major reason.

]]>http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/09/overdose-deaths-in-us-2015/feed/022699792016-12-09T07:25:59+00:002016-12-09T07:25:59+00:00South Korean president is impeached in stunning fallhttp://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/09/south-korean-president-impeached/
http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/09/south-korean-president-impeached/#respondFri, 09 Dec 2016 14:04:09 +0000http://www.denverpost.com?p=2269889&preview_id=2269889SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean lawmakers on Friday impeached President Park Geun-hye, a stunning and swift fall for the country’s first female leader amid protests that drew millions into the streets in united fury.

After the vote, parliamentary officials hand-delivered formal documents to the presidential Blue House that stripped Park of her power and allowed the country’s No. 2 official, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, to assume leadership until the Constitutional Court rules on whether Park must permanently step down. The court has up to six months to decide.

“I’d like to say that I’m deeply sorry to the people because the nation has to experience this turmoil because of my negligence and lack of virtue at a time when our security and economy both face difficulties,” Park said after the vote, before a closed-door meeting with her Cabinet where she and other aides reportedly broke down in tears.

Hwang separately said that he wanted “the ruling and opposition political parties and the parliament to gather strength and wisdom so that we can return stability to the country and people as soon as possible.”

Once called the “Queen of Elections” for her ability to pull off wins for her party, Park has been surrounded in the Blue House in recent weeks by millions of South Koreans who have taken to the streets in protest. They are furious over what prosecutors say was collusion by Park with a longtime friend to extort money from companies and to give that confidante extraordinary sway over government decisions.

Organizers said about 10,000 people gathered in front of the National Assembly to demand that lawmakers pass the impeachment motion. Some had spent the night on the streets after traveling from other cities. Scuffles broke out between angry anti-Park farmers, some of whom had driven tractors to the assembly from their farms, and police. When impeachment happened, many of those gathered raised their hands in the air and leapt about, cheering and laughing.

“Can you hear the roar of the people in front of the National Assembly?” Kim Kwan-young, an opposition lawmaker said ahead of the vote, referring to South Korea’s formal name. “Our great people have already opened the way. Let’s make it so we can stand honorably in front of history and our descendants.”

The handover of power prompted the prime minister to order South Korea’s defense minister to put the military on a state of heightened readiness to brace for any potential provocation by North Korea. No suspicious movements by the North were reported, however.

Park will be formally removed from office if at least six of the Constitutional Court’s nine justices support her impeachment, and the country would then hold a presidential election within 60 days.

National Assembly speaker Chung Sye-kyun said the bill on Park’s impeachment was passed by a vote of 234 for and 56 opposed, with seven invalid votes and two abstentions. That well surpassed the necessary two-thirds vote needed in the 300-seat assembly, with the opposition getting strong support from members of Park’s party.

Present for the vote were relatives of the victims of a 2014 ferry disaster that killed more than 300 and was blamed in part on government incompetence and corruption; they cheered and clapped after the impeachment was announced. Most lawmakers left the hall quietly, though some could be seen taking selfies as they waited to vote.

Lawmakers from both parties faced huge pressure to act against Park, the daughter of a military dictator still revered by many conservatives for lifting the country from poverty in the 1960s and 1970s.

Her approval ratings had plunged to 4 percent, the lowest among South Korean leaders since democracy came in the late 1980s, and even elderly conservatives who once made up her political base have distanced themselves from her. An opinion survey released earlier Friday showed 81 percent of respondents supported Park’s impeachment.

South Korean lawmakers last voted to impeach a president in 2004, when they accused late liberal President Roh Moo-hyun of minor election law violations and incompetence. The Constitutional Court restored Roh’s powers about two months later, ruling that his wrongdoings weren’t serious enough to justify his unseating.

The chances of the court reinstating Park are considered low because her charges are much graver. Some legal experts say the court might need more than a couple of months to decide. This is because Park’s case is much more complicated than Roh’s, and because her lawyers will likely press the court not to uphold the impeachment unless the suspicions against her are proven.

Hundreds gathered Friday night at a boulevard in front of an old palace gate in downtown Seoul, which has been the center of demonstrations in recent weeks calling for Park’s removal. Protesters planned to march close to the Blue House.

The impeachment is a remarkable fall for Park, who convincingly beat her liberal opponent in 2012. Park’s single, five-year term was originally set to end Feb. 24, 2018.

The political turmoil around Park comes after years of frustration over a leadership style that inspired comparisons to her father, Park Chung-hee. Critics saw in Park an unwillingness to tolerate dissent as her government cracked down on press freedom, pushed to dissolve a leftist party and allowed aggressive police suppression of anti-government protests, which saw the death of an activist in 2016.

She also was heavily criticized over her government’s handling of the 2014 ferry sinking; most of those victims were school kids.

Park has repeatedly apologized over the public anger caused by the latest scandal, but has denied any legal wrongdoing. She attempted to avoid impeachment last month by making a conditional offer to step down if parliament could come up with a stable power-transfer plan, but the overture was dismissed by opposition lawmakers as a stalling ploy.

In indicting Park’s longtime friend, Choi Soon-sil, and two former presidential aides last month, state prosecutors said they believed the president was “collusively involved” in criminal activities by the suspects. Choi and the two former aides were accused of bullying large companies into providing tens of millions of dollars and favors to foundations and businesses Choi controlled, and enabling Choi to interfere with state affairs.

Park’s lawyer has called the accusations groundless.

Park first met Choi in the 1970s, around the time Park was acting as first lady after her mother was killed during a 1974 assassination attempt on her father. Choi’s father, a shadowy figure named Choi Tae-min who was a Buddhist monk, a religious cult leader and a Christian pastor at different times, emerged as Park’s mentor.

The Choi clan has long been suspected of building a fortune by using their connections with Park to extort companies and government organizations. Choi’s ex-husband is also a former close aide of Park’s.

PUNTA DE ARAYA, Venezuela — The pirates had killed Flaco Marval’s brother and two cousins, and word was they were coming for the rest of the family.

So the skinny 17-year-old and the other Marval men ran to grab the guns they’d soldered together from kitchen pipes, smoked an acrid-smelling drug to boost their energy, and went out into the night to patrol the sandy village streets.

“We just have to kill these thugs, and then we can go back to fishing like we always did,” Flaco said.

Pirates are terrorizing the coastal state of Sucre, once home to the world’s fourth-largest tuna fleet and a thriving fishing industry.

That trade has collapsed, along with virtually every industry across Venezuela. Gangs of out-of-work fishermen prey upon those who still venture out into the open sea, stealing their catch and their motors, tying them up, throwing them overboard, and sometimes shooting them. The robberies have taken place daily this year, and dozens of fishermen have died.

“People can’t make a living fishing anymore, so they’re using their boats for the options that are left: smuggling gas, running drugs, and piracy,” said Jose Antonio Garcia, leader of the state’s largest union.

The warm Caribbean sea is increasingly becoming a grim free-for-all.

Seven members of the Marval clan were preparing to return home one night in September when they heard shots.

“There’s no way to run when you’re stopped dead in the water, so I just started praying, ‘God, let them leave without hurting us,'” 42-year-old Edecio Marval said.

Instead, after stealing the boat’s motor and the night’s catch, the men shot dead Edecio’s oldest child, who had kept the group laughing all night with cheesy jokes, and two others.

As they prepared to kill Edecio’s teenage nephew, one pirate shouted for the others to stop. “No, that’s my friend,” he said. They had fished together until last year.

So the group sped off, leaving the surviving Marvals to send flashes of light into the darkness. They wept as the bodies of their loved ones grew cold beside them.

Back home in the village of Punta de Araya, they told police that they’d recognized the pirates’ leader: It was El Beta, a 19-year-old killer with 40 men at his command who lived a half mile down the road.

El Beta began calling Flaco Marval, threatening to come back and wipe out the whole clan.

“Your brother cried like a little bitch when I killed him. Now I’m coming for all of you snitches,” he said in a taunting voice message the family turned over to the police.

The Marvals hunkered down. Along with their neighbors, they gave up going to the state-run hospital up the hill because that area was controlled by El Beta. They stopped sending their kids to school. And they started nightly patrols.

“It’s not safe to leave the house,” said Tibisay Marval, whose son was killed.

On the night they prepared to face down El Beta, Flaco spotted a soldier darting beneath a streetlight with his Kalashnikov rifle drawn. Soon, the streets were filled with villagers hoping the coast guard had caught a group of pirates.

“Let’s see if someone gets killed!” a neighbor shouted.

As the throng pushed in, soldiers loaded three men onto a cargo truck. But the villagers started to protest that they had the wrong guys; they knew those suspects to be honest fishermen. The soldiers let the men go.

Women began crowding around a lieutenant. Why hadn’t he helped get their motors back? When was he going to take a stand against El Beta?

The lieutenant urged patience. But later he confessed that he too wanted to see El Beta dead. Officers have arrested one of El Beta’s men for the Marval murders, but are reluctant to make mass arrests because the jails are already packed full.

“You hear piracy and you think of guys robbing container ships in Africa. But here it’s just poor fishermen robbing other poor fishermen,” said Sucre lawyer Luis Morales. “It’s the same kind of crime we’ve seen in the streets, but spreading to the sea.”

Shortly after the soldiers left Punta de Araya, the Marval women started getting warnings from friends in El Beta’s neighborhood that 15 members of his gang were preparing to attack.

The women debated whether to call back the coast guard and risk being labeled rats. Just as they decided to make the call, the village’s power and cell service went out, as if cut by a hostile force. Panicked, they went to alert Flaco and the others.

The cousins rushed to their armory of homemade handguns and rifles, hidden in a cinderblock hut with a sheet hung for a door.

Laughing at each other’s coughing fits, they smoked cocaine-laced marijuana through a long glass pipe they’d fashioned out of a fluorescent light bulb. They tried to psych themselves up for battle by listening again to El Beta’s threatening message, crowding around a half-broken flip phone.

“Remember how we used to take naps on the beach with money in our pockets?” one cousin said.

“This isn’t going to be over until someone kills that guy,” said another.

Suddenly, the dogs began to bark. The young men shot out to the street to see if the gang was on its way. They kept up their patrol for hours, pausing every once in a while to smoke from the glass pipe.

Eventually, the barking died down. The power came back on. El Beta did not show up.

The Marval women stayed awake until dawn, playing dominos near a shrine to the three slain men. Flaco’s aunt Petra Marval said they worry about the cousins, but see no other option.

“Flaco could be killed here in the streets,” she said. “But he could be killed out at sea, too.”

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, a vocal critic of substantially increasing the minimum wage and an opponent of rules that would make more workers eligible for overtime pay, as head of the Labor Department, according to a Republican briefed on the decision.

Puzder, who runs CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., has been a harsh critic of raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, arguing that it would increase costs for consumers and lead to fewer jobs. He also opposes the recently-delayed Labor Department rule that aimed to make millions more workers eligible for overtime pay.

As the head of a fast-food company, Puzder is a supporter of the approach touted by Trump on the campaign trail that lowering taxes for corporations and the wealthy and loosening regulations for businesses can boost job creation. He is a strong opponent of the Affordable Care Act, which he claims has hurt the restaurant industry because higher health premiums have left consumers with less money to spend.

By bringing in Puzder, Trump is signaling that he may scale back some of regulations introduced by current Labor Secretary Tom Perez. He will have the potential to reverse some of the Obama administration’s most notable efforts to bolster protections for workers, families and retirement savers.

His appointment puts the future of the Labor Department’s overtime rule into question. The rule was halted by a federal judge last month, roughly a week before it was supposed to go into effect. to allow the court more time to come to a final decision. In a Forbes op-ed that ran after the Labor Department finalized the overtime rule in May, Puzder wrote that the rule would “add to the extensive regulatory maze the Obama Administration has imposed on employers,” and that the rule would lead to fewer hours and reduced opportunities for workers.

With the nomination of the fast-food executive, Trump brings another top fundraiser into his cabinet. Puzder supported Trump’s race to the White House financially and served as an economic adviser to his campaign. He and his wife, Deanna, contributed a total of $332,000 to helping Trump get elected, including money given to Trump’s campaign, to joint fundraising committees and to the Republican National Committee, according to the Federal Election Commission.

GATINEAU, Quebec — A black woman often described as Canada’s Rosa Parks for her 1946 decision to sit in a whites-only section of a Nova Scotia movie theater will be the first Canadian woman to be celebrated on the face of a Canadian banknote.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau said Thursday that Viola Desmond will grace the front of the $10 bill when the next series goes into circulation in 2018.

A businesswoman turned civil libertarian, Desmond built a business as a beautician and mentored young black women in Nova Scotia.

It was in 1946 when she rejected racial discrimination by sitting in a whites-only section of a New Glasgow movie theater. She was arrested and fined. Her actions inspired later generations of black people in Nova Scotia and the rest of Canada.

]]>http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/08/viola-desmond-canadas-rosa-parks-on-banknote/feed/022634662016-12-08T15:35:10+00:002016-12-08T15:35:10+00:00John Glenn, first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth and who later spent 24 years representing Ohio in the Senate, has died at 95http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/08/john-glenn-dies/
http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/08/john-glenn-dies/#respondThu, 08 Dec 2016 20:42:51 +0000http://www.denverpost.com?p=2262409&preview_id=2262409

By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON — John Glenn, whose 1962 flight as the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth made him an all-American hero and propelled him to a long career in the U.S. Senate, died Thursday. The last survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts was 95.

Glenn died at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where he was hospitalized for more than a week, said Hank Wilson, communications director for the John Glenn School of Public Affairs.

John Herschel Glenn Jr. had two major career paths that often intersected: flying and politics, and he soared in both of them.

Before he gained fame orbiting the world, he was a fighter pilot in two wars, and as a test pilot, he set a transcontinental speed record. He later served 24 years in the Senate from Ohio. A rare setback was a failed 1984 run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

His long political career enabled him to return to space in the shuttle Discovery at age 77 in 1998, a cosmic victory lap that he relished and turned into a teachable moment about growing old. He holds the record for the oldest person in space.

More than anything, Glenn was the ultimate and uniquely American space hero: a combat veteran with an easy smile, a strong marriage of 70 years and nerves of steel. Schools, a space center and the Columbus airport were named after him. So were children.

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The Soviet Union leaped ahead in space exploration by putting the Sputnik 1 satellite in orbit in 1957, and then launched the first man in space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in a 108-minute orbital flight on April 12, 1961. After two suborbital flights by Alan Shepard Jr. and Gus Grissom, it was up to Glenn to be the first American to orbit the Earth.

“Godspeed, John Glenn,” fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter radioed just before Glenn thundered off a Cape Canaveral launch pad, now a National Historic Landmark, to a place America had never been. At the time of that Feb. 20, 1962, flight, Glenn was 40 years old.

With the all-business phrase, “Roger, the clock is operating, we’re underway,” Glenn radioed to Earth as he started his 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds in space. Years later, he explained he said that because he didn’t feel like he had lifted off and it was the only way he knew he had launched.

During the flight, Glenn uttered a phrase that he would repeat frequently throughout life: “Zero G, and I feel fine.”
“It still seems so vivid to me,” Glenn said in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press on the 50th anniversary of the flight. “I still can sort of pseudo feel some of those same sensations I had back in those days during launch and all.”

Glenn said he was often asked if he was afraid, and he replied, “If you are talking about fear that overcomes what you are supposed to do, no. You’ve trained very hard for those flights.”

Glenn’s ride in the cramped Friendship 7 capsule had its scary moments, however. Sensors showed his heat shield was loose after three orbits, and Mission Control worried he might burn up during re-entry when temperatures reached 3,000 degrees. But the heat shield held.

Even before then, Glenn flew in dangerous skies. He was a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea who flew low, got his plane riddled with bullets, flew with baseball great Ted Williams and earned macho nicknames during 149 combat missions. And as a test pilot he broke aviation records.

NASA via AP

Astronaut John H. Glenn Jr. is pictured aboard the MA-6/Friendship 7 capsule during the United States's initial orbital flight. Glenn gained fame as the first man to orbit the Earth in 1962, and when he flies on the space shuttle Discovery mission set for late October this year he will become the oldest human ever to fly in space.

Associated Press file

Astronaut John Glenn is seen with his Friendship 7 space capsule atop an Atlas rocket at Cape Canaveral, Fla., Feb. 20, 1962 ready for the flight which made him the first American to orbit the earth.

NASA via AP

In 1962, astronaut John H. Glenn Jr. checks the Friendship 7 spacecraft after completing three orbits around the earth while a technician inside the spacecraft checks the interior for any damage. On January 16, 1998, in Washington, D.C., it was announced that Glenn would fly on the space shuttle Discovery flight set for late October. Glenn, 77, who gained fame as the first man to orbit the Earth in 1962, will become the oldest human ever to fly in space.

NASA via AP

In this Feb. 20, 1962 photo provided by NASA, astronaut John Glenn climbs into the Friendship 7 space capsule atop an Atlas rocket at Cape Canaveral, Fla. for the flight which made him the first American to orbit the earth.

AP Photo

This May 1961 file photo shows astronauts, from left, Virgil I. Grissom, John Glenn and Alan Shepard. On Friday, Nov. 11, 2016, new exhibit called "Heroes and Legends" opened at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

AFP/Getty Images

US space shuttle Discovery crew members are seated in their launch positions 09 October on the shuttle's middeck at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, during a terminal countdown demonstration test. Discovery's seven-member crew will be launched into space 29 October to conduct a variety of science experiments in the pressurized SPACEHAB module and deployment and retrieval of the Spartan free-flyer payload. From left are: Payload Specialist Chiaki Mukai of Japan, US Astronaut/Senator John Glenn, and US Astronaut Stephen Robinson.

Robert A. Reeder, Washington Post

John Glenn, the 77-year-old astronaut, and some of his crew mates at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Washington Post photo

John Glenn climbs the stairway to one of the simulators at the Johnson Space Center in Houston as part of the training for his scheduled Oct. 29 space flight.

AP Photo, Chris O'Meara

Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, waves as he leaves the Operations and Checkout Building Thursday morning Oct. 29, 1998 at Kennedy Space Center. Glenn, Commander Curt Brown, front, and five other crew members were on their way to Launch Pad 39-B and a planned liftoff on the Space Shuttle Discovery.

AP Photo, David J. Phillip

Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, gives a thumbs up as he prepares to take off in a T-38 jet for a training flight Monday, Aug. 24, 1998, in Houston. Glenn, 77, the former Mercury astronaut, took the flight as part of the ongoing preparations for his October mission aboard space shuttle Discovery.

AP Photo, David J. Phillip

The space shuttle Discovery streaks through the sky after liftoff several miles from a plaque of astronaut John Glenn, D-Ohio, at Complex 14 launch pad at Kennedy Space Center Thursday, Oct. 29, 1998. Glenn, who returned to space aboard Discovery Thursday, lifted off in 1962 from Complex 14 to become the first American to orbit the Earth.

AP Photo, NASA TV

Astronauts Steve Lindsey, left, Curt Brown and John Glenn smile during a mission update from aboard the space shuttle Discovery Friday, Oct. 30, 1998 in this image from NASA television.

AP Photo

Jay Leno talks with shuttle astronauts Steve Lindsey, Curt Brown and Sen. John Glenn, from left, during the taping of a segment of "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," in Burbank, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 4, 1998. The interview will be shown Wednesday night.

Space shuttle Discovery astronauts gather at the Kennedy Space Center on Sunday, Nov. 8, 1998. The astronauts completed their nine-day mission on Saturday and will fly back to Houston on Sunday to begin analyzing data from the experiments they had on board. From left: astronaut Scott Parazynski, Stephen Robinson, Japanese astronaut Chiaki Mukai, shuttle pilot Steven Lindsey and his daughter Jill, Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, commander Curtis Brown and Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque.

Keith Meyers, New York Times Photo

John Glenn makes his second trip through New York's Canyon of Heroes Monday which was organized to salute his return to space 36 years after he became America's first man in orbit. Accompanying Glenn is his wife Annie.

AP Photo, Suzanne Plunkett

Dressed in a blue flight suit, Senator John Glenn, center, and his wife Annie, wave from a 1952 classic Phaeton convertible to crowds gathered to honor him, during a parade through Manhattan's "Canyon of Heroes" Monday, Nov. 16, 1998, in New York.

AP Photo, Charles Dharapak

A flag at half-staff is reflected in a window as former astronaut John Glenn pauses while speaking to reporters after appearing on NBC's Meet the Press in Washington Sunday, Feb. 2, 2003. Glenn spoke about the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

Photo, Cox Washington Bureau

Former Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, during his appearance before the House Science and Technology committee in Washington, D.C. Wednesday, July 30, 2008. The former NASA astronaut and the first American to orbit the Earth testified at the hearing on "NASA at 50: Past Accomplishments and Future Opportunities and Challenges.

photo, AP file

Astronaut Malcolm Scott Carpenter goes over some last-minute details with Col. John Glenn, who was the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the earth, before moving to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Fla., where Carpenter boarded the Aurora 7.

photo, AP file

John Glenn, left, who made the first orbital flight, shakes Scott Carpenter's hand. This scene took place on 11th floor gantry before Carpenter entered space capsule.

Lewis Geyer,Times-Call

Senator John Glenn returns to his seat after giving a eulogy during the funeral of fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013 at St. John's Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colo.

Business Wire photo

Kodak CEO George Fisher presents Senator
John Glenn with the KODAK DCS 460 digital camera Glenn and his fellow STS-95 crew members used during Glenn's historic return to space. The presentation was the highlight of the tribute dinner for Sen. Glenn at the National Air and Space Museum; marking the inauguration of the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy at The Ohio State University. Kodak products have been a part of U.S. space
exploration since Friendship 7 - over 35 years ago.

Mark Avino, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum via The New York Times

An undated handout photo of the cotton undergarment worn by John Glenn on the 1962 Friendship 7 mission, with coil spacers permitting airflow. Next spring the National Air and Space Museum's collection of about 300 spacesuits that kept astronauts alive and kicking while beyond earth will get their due in a traveling exhibition of full-size photographs and X-ray images organized by the Smithsonian.

AP Photo, Jay LaPrete

In this Feb. 20, 2012, file photo, U.S. Sen. John Glenn talks with astronauts on the International Space Station via satellite in Columbus, Ohio. Changing Port Columbus’ name to John Glenn Columbus International Airport will cost an estimated $775,000 in new signs, according to a newly released study. The airport was named in honor of the astronaut and former U.S. senator in June 2016. The 95-year-old Ohio native was the first American to orbit the earth.

AP Photo, Richard Drew

Former U.S. Sen. John Glenn signs a football helmet at the news conference for the National Football Foundation Hal of Fame, in New York Tuesday Dec. 9, 2008. Glenn will get the organization's 2008 Gold Medal their dinner Tuesday night.

AP Photo, Jay LaPrete

Former U.S. Sen. John Glenn, right, shakes hands with eight-year-old Josh Schick before the start of a celebration for the renaming of Port Columbus International Airport to John Glenn Columbus International Airport Tuesday, June 28, 2016, in Columbus, Ohio. Senate Bill 159, which changes the name of the airport, goes into effect in September.

NASA via AP

Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, waves in this Oct. 28, 1998 file photo at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Glenn said he's narrating an orchestral performance to instill in others an appreciation of space. Glenn, who became the first American to circle the Earth on Feb. 20, 1962, will accompany Peter Nero and the Philly Pops in an April 8, 2002, performance titled "Voyage into Space.'' The performance at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, in Philadelphia, will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the space launch.

The green-eyed, telegenic Marine even won $25,000 on the game show “Name That Tune” with a 10-year-old partner. And that was before April 6, 1959, when his life changed by being selected as one of the Mercury 7 astronauts and instantly started attracting more than his share of the spotlight.

Glenn in later years regaled crowds with stories of NASA’s testing of would-be astronauts, from psychological tests — come with 20 answers to the open-ended question “I am” — to surviving spinning that pushed 16 times normal gravity against his body, popping blood vessels.

But it wasn’t nearly as bad as coming to Cape Canaveral to see the first unmanned rocket test.

“We’re watching this thing go up and up and up … and all at once it blew up right over us, and that was our introduction to the Atlas,” Glenn said in 2011. “We looked at each other and wanted to have a meeting with the engineers in the morning.”

In 1959, Glenn wrote in Life magazine: “Space travel is at the frontier of my profession. It is going to be accomplished, and I want to be in on it. There is also an element of simple duty involved. I am convinced that I have something to give this project.”

That sense of duty was instilled at an early age. Glenn was born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio, and grew up in New Concord, Ohio, with the nickname “Bud.” He joined the town band as a trumpeter at age 10 and accompanied his father one Memorial Day in an echoing version of “Taps.” In his 1999 memoir, Glenn wrote “that feeling sums up my childhood. It formed my beliefs and my sense of responsibility. Everything that came after that just came naturally.”

His love of flight was lifelong; John Glenn Sr. spoke of the many summer evenings he arrived home to find his son running around the yard with outstretched arms, pretending he was piloting a plane. Last June, at a ceremony renaming the Columbus airport for him, Glenn recalled imploring his parents to take him to that airport to look at planes whenever they passed through the city: “It was something I was fascinated with.” He piloted his own private plane until age 90.

Glenn’s goal of becoming a commercial pilot was changed by World War II. He left Muskingum College to join the Naval Air Corps and soon after, the Marines.

He became a successful fighter pilot who ran 59 hazardous missions, often as a volunteer or as the requested backup of assigned pilots. A war later, in Korea, he earned the nickname “MiG-Mad Marine” (or “Old Magnet A — ,” which he sometimes paraphrased as “Old Magnet Tail.”)

Robert A. Reeder, Washington Post

John Glenn, the 77-year-old astronaut, and some of his crew mates at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“I was the one who went in low and got them,” Glenn said, explaining that he often landed with huge holes in the side of his aircraft because he didn’t like to shoot from high altitudes.

Glenn’s public life began when he broke the transcontinental airspeed record, bursting from Los Angeles to New York City in three hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds. With his Crusader averaging 725 mph, the 1957 flight proved the jet could endure stress when pushed to maximum speeds over long distances.

In New York, he got a hero’s welcome — his first tickertape parade. He got another after his flight on Friendship 7.
That mission also introduced Glenn to politics. He addressed a joint session of Congress, and dined at the White House. He became friends with President Kennedy and ally and friend of his brother Robert. The Kennedys urged him to enter politics, and after a difficult few starts he did.

Glenn spent 24 years in the U.S. Senate, representing Ohio longer than any other senator in the state’s history. He announced his impending retirement in 1997, 35 years to the day after he became the first American in orbit, saying, “There is still no cure for the common birthday.”

Glenn returned to space in a long-awaited second flight in 1998 aboard the space shuttle Discovery. He got to move around aboard the shuttle for far longer — nine days compared with just under five hours in 1962 — as well as sleep and experiment with bubbles in weightlessness.

In a news conference from space, Glenn said, “To look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible.”

NASA tailored a series of geriatric-reaction experiments to create a scientific purpose for Glenn’s mission, but there was more to it than that: a revival of the excitement of the earliest days of the space race, a public relations bonanza and the gift of a lifetime.

Glenn would later write that when he mentioned the idea of going back into space to his wife, Annie, she responded: “Over my dead body.”

Glenn and his crewmates flew 3.6 million miles, compared with 75,000 miles aboard Friendship 7.

Shortly before he ran for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination, a new generation was introduced to astronaut Glenn with the film adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff.” He was portrayed as the ultimate straight arrow amid a group of hard-partying astronauts.

Glenn said in 2011: “I don’t think any of us cared for the movie ‘The Right Stuff’; I know I didn’t.”

Glenn was unable to capitalize on the publicity, though, and his poorly organized campaign was short-lived. He dropped out of the race with his campaign $2.5 million in the red — a debt that lingered even after he retired from the Senate in 1999.

He later joked that except for going into debt, humiliating his family and gaining 16 pounds, running for president was a good experience.

Glenn generally steered clear of campaigns after that, saying he didn’t want to mix politics with his second space flight. He sat out the Senate race to succeed him — he was hundreds of miles above Earth on Election Day — and largely was quiet in the 2000 presidential race.

He first ran for the Senate in 1964 but left the race when he suffered a concussion after slipping in the bathroom and hitting his head on the tub.

He tried again in 1970 but was defeated in the primary by Howard Metzenbaum, who later lost the general election to Robert Taft Jr. It was the start of a complex relationship with Metzenbaum, whom he later joined in the Senate.

For the next four years, Glenn devoted his attention to business and investments that made him a multimillionaire. He had joined the board of Royal Crown Cola after the aborted 1964 campaign and was president of Royal Crown International from 1967 to 1969. In the early 1970s, he remained with Royal Crown and invested in a chain of Holiday Inns.

In 1974, Glenn ran against Metzenbaum in what turned into a bitter primary and won the election. He eventually made peace with Metzenbaum, who won election to the Senate in 1976.

Glenn set a record in 1980 by winning re-election with a 1.6 million vote margin.

He became an expert on nuclear weaponry and was the Senate’s most dogged advocate of nonproliferation. He was the leading supporter of the B-1 bomber when many in Congress doubted the need for it. As chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, he turned a microscope on waste and fraud in the federal bureaucracy.

Glenn said the lowest point of his life was 1990, when he and four other senators came under scrutiny for their connections to Charles Keating, the notorious financier who eventually served prison time for his role in the costly savings and loan failure of the 1980s. The Senate Ethics Committee cleared Glenn of serious wrongdoing but said he “exercised poor judgment.”

The episode was the only brush with scandal in his long public career and didn’t diminish his popularity in Ohio.
Glenn joked that the only astronaut he was envious of was his fellow Ohioan: Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.

“I’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of great experiences in my life and I’m thankful for them,” he said in 2012.
In 1943, Glenn married his childhood sweetheart, Anna Margaret Castor. They met when they were toddlers, and when she had mumps as a teenager, he came to her house, cut a hole in her bedroom window screen, and passed her a radio to keep her company, a friend recounted.

“I don’t remember the first time I told Annie I loved her, or the first time she told me,” Glenn would write in his memoir. “It was just something we both knew.” He bought her a diamond engagement ring in 1942 for $125. It’s never been replaced.

They had two children, Carolyn and John David.

He and his wife, Annie, split their later years between Washington and Columbus. Both served as trustees at their alma mater, Muskingum College. Glenn spent time promoting the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University, which also houses an archive of his private papers and photographs.
___
Online:http://www.osu.edu/glenninstitutehttp://johnglennhome.org/

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. surgeon general is calling e-cigarettes an emerging public health threat to the nation’s youth.

In a report released Thursday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy acknowledged a need for more research into the health effects of “vaping,” but said e-cigarettes aren’t harmless and too many teens are using them.

“My concern is e-cigarettes have the potential to create a whole new generation of kids who are addicted to nicotine,” Murthy told The Associated Press. “If that leads to the use of other tobacco-related products, then we are going to be moving backward instead of forward.”

Battery-powered e-cigarettes turn liquid nicotine into an inhalable vapor without the harmful tar generated by regular cigarettes. Vaping was first pushed as safer for current smokers. There’s no scientific consensus on the risks or advantages of vaping, including how it affects the likelihood of someone either picking up regular tobacco products or kicking the habit.

Federal figures show that last year, 16 percent of high school students reported at least some use of e-cigarettes — even some who say they’ve never smoked a conventional cigarette. While not all contain nicotine, Murthy’s report says e-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco-related product among youth.

Nicotine is bad for a developing brain no matter how it’s exposed, Murthy said.

“Your kids are not an experiment,” he says in a public service announcement being released with the report.

It’s already illegal to sell e-cigarettes to minors. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration issued new rules that, for the first time, will require makers of nicotine-emitting devices to begin submitting their ingredients for regulators to review. The vaping industry argues the regulations will wipe out small companies in favor of more harmful products, and likely will lobby the incoming Trump administration to undo the rules.

Murthy’s report calls on parents and health workers to make concerns about e-cigarettes clear to young people. He said local officials should take action, too, such as including e-cigarettes in indoor smoke-free policies.

SALISBURY, N.C. (AP) — The man accused of firing an assault rifle inside a Washington restaurant said he regrets how he handled the situation but refused to completely dismiss the false online claims involving a child sex ring that brought him there.

“I just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way,” Edgar Maddison Welch, who’s been jailed since his Sunday arrest, told The New York Times in a Wednesday videoconference.

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

The front door of Comet Ping Pong pizza shop, in Washington, Monday, Dec. 5, 2016. A fake news story prompted a man to fire a rifle inside a popular Washington, D.C., pizza place as he attempted to “self-investigate” a conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring from there, police said.

Welch, 28, told the newspaper he started driving to Washington from his Salisbury, North Carolina, home intending only to give the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant a “closer look.” But while on the way, he said he felt his “heart breaking over the thought of innocent people suffering.”

Welch would not say why he brought an AR-15 into the pizza shop and fired it, the newspaper reported.

Asked what he thought when he found there were no children in the restaurant, Welch said: “The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent.” But he would not completely dismiss the online claims while talking to the newspaper, conceding only that there were no children “inside that dwelling.”

Welch appears to have lived an aimless life that became turbulent in the weeks before he was drawn to the nation’s capital by a fake news story.

Friends and family say he is a well-meaning father of two girls who wanted to be a firefighter. But he also unnerved some with his religious fervor and sometimes had trouble detaching himself from the internet.

In the weeks before his Washington arrest, there were other signs of turbulence. In late October, Welch struck a teenage pedestrian with his car in his hometown, requiring the boy to be airlifted to a hospital, according to a police report that said he wasn’t immediately charged. More recently, days before he drove to Washington, he was dropped from the rolls of a volunteer fire department.

In past years, he was convicted of drunken driving and minor drug charges.

But the one constant, friends and family say, was his love for his two young daughters.

“He’s a father and a very loving man, very concerned about children,” said his aunt Tajuana Tadlock, adding: “He’s not a vigilante, by no check of the words.”

Tadlock said Welch’s parents haven’t been able to talk to him to ask what he was thinking, and the family’s only information comes from the news and the public defender.

In Washington, court documents say Welch fired an AR-15 rifle multiple times inside the restaurant but later exited with his hands up. He told police “he had read online that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves,” and he wanted to investigate. He said he surrendered when he found no signs of children being held. Welch faces charges including assault with a dangerous weapon.

On Thursday, a judge delayed a preliminary hearing for Welch. His public defender requested the delay, saying she needed more time to investigate the case. He will be back in court Tuesday.

In recent years, Welch often mentioned his Christian faith. Interspersed with Facebook posts about his daughters are the registered Republican’s musings on the Bible and religion.

Danielle Tillman of Raleigh said she met Welch a few months ago and has known his current girlfriend for years. She recalls Welch made her uncomfortable while talking at length about religion. At one point, he grabbed her hand and prayed, asking for “the demons to come out of me,” she said.

Welch’s family has roots in the Salisbury area, where his father and grandfather served in local government, according to the Salisbury Post. Friends say he attended West Rowan High School. A woman at the family’s property declined to answer questions this week.

Around age 18, Welch pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drug possession charges in neighboring Cabarrus County, according to online records of the January 2007 offense.

Welch enrolled at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, but court records say he didn’t graduate.

On a break from college in 2009, Welch was interviewed by the Salisbury Post after he made it halfway through a hike of the 500-mile Colorado Trail. He told the newspaper the hike helped him overcome an addiction to the internet.

“It’s a good feeling, going solo,” he told the newspaper. “There’s something spiritual about it.”

In April 2013, Welch was charged with impaired driving with a blood-alcohol content of .09, court records show. He pleaded guilty, was sentenced to probation and community service and underwent alcohol counseling.

Rowan County records show that after a short marriage, his wife filed for divorce in November 2014. The thin file doesn’t say why they split up. The divorce complaint was dismissed in 2015 after neither attended a scheduled hearing. Documents related to his arrest say they remain separated, and his two children live with him.

Welch twice served briefly as a volunteer firefighter, and his aunt said he was recently taking classes needed to get a paying job as a firefighter.

Locke Fire Chief Rusty Alexander said Welch barely showed up at the fire station after joining in 2012, and lasted about six months.

“He tried it, and basically it wasn’t for him,” Alexander said.

In May 2016, Welch became a volunteer firefighter in the town of Spencer, Chief Gray Grubb said. Grubb said Welch stopped attending training sessions and didn’t answer alarms, so he was removed from the active roster Nov. 30.

“When we interviewed him, he seemed like a good guy,” Grubb said.

___

Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko and Sarah Brumfield in Washington and Martha Waggoner in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

]]>http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/08/pizza-shop-gunman-regrets/feed/022616202016-12-08T12:28:32+00:002016-12-08T13:33:45+00:00U.S. life expectancy falls, as many kinds of death increasehttp://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/08/us-life-expectancy-falls/
http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/08/us-life-expectancy-falls/#respondThu, 08 Dec 2016 19:23:44 +0000http://www.denverpost.com?p=2261463&preview_id=2261463NEW YORK (AP) — A decades-long trend of rising life expectancy in the U.S. could be ending: It declined last year and it is no better than it was four years ago.

In most of the years since World War II, life expectancy in the U.S. has inched up, thanks to medical advances, public health campaigns and better nutrition and education.

But last year it slipped, an exceedingly rare event in a year that did not include a major disease outbreak. Other one-year declines occurred in 1993, when the nation was in the throes of the AIDS epidemic, and 1980, the result of an especially nasty flu season.

In 2015, rates for 8 of the 10 leading causes of death rose. Even more troubling to health experts: the U.S. seems to be settling into a trend of no improvement at all.

“With four years, you’re starting to see some indication of something a little more ominous,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois-Chicago public health researcher.

An American born in 2015 is expected to live 78 years and 9— months, on average, according to preliminary data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An American born in 2014 could expect to live about month longer, and even an American born in 2012 would have been expected to live slightly longer. In 1950, life expectancy was just over 68 years.

The United States ranks below dozens of other high-income countries in life expectancy, according to the World Bank. It is highest in Japan, at nearly 84 years.

The CDC report is based mainly on 2015 death certificates. There were more than 2.7 million deaths, or about 86,000 more than the previous year. The increase in raw numbers partly reflects the nation’s growing and aging population.

It was led by an unusual upturn in the death rate from the nation’s leading killer, heart disease. Death rates also increased for chronic lower lung disease, accidental injuries, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease and suicide.

The only clear drop was in cancer, the nation’s No. 2 killer.

Experts aren’t sure what’s behind the stall. Some, like Olshansky, suspect obesity, an underlying factor in some of the largest causes of death, particularly heart disease.

But there’s also the impact of rising drug overdoses and suicides, he noted. “There are a lot of things happening at the same time,” he said.

Some years the CDC later revises its life expectancy estimate after doing additional analysis, including for its 2014 estimate.

Average life expectancy declined for men, falling by more than two months, to 76 years and 3 — months in 2015. It fell by about one month for women, to 81 years and 2 — months, the CDC said.

Death rates increased for black men, white men, white women, and slightly for Hispanic men and women. But they did not change for black women.

The new CDC report did not offer a geographic breakdown of 2015 deaths, or analysis of death based on education or income. But other research has shown death rates are rising sharply for poorer people — particularly white people — in rural areas but not wealthier and more highly educated and people on the coasts.

“The troubling trends are most pronounced for the people who are the most disadvantaged,” said Jennifer Karas Montez, a Syracuse University researcher who studies adult death patterns.

“But if we don’t know why life expectancy is decreasing for some groups, we can’t be confident that it won’t start declining for others,” she said.

MEUREUDU, Indonesia — Thousands of people in the Indonesian province of Aceh took refuge for the night in mosques and temporary shelters after a strong earthquake Wednesday killed nearly 100 people and destroyed dozens of buildings.

Some were homeless after the quake made their houses unsafe and others were too scared to return home. Killer quakes occur regularly in the region, where many live with the terrifying memory of a giant Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake that struck off Sumatra. The magnitude-9.1 quake triggered a devastating tsunami that killed more than 100,000 Acehnese.

Maj. Gen. Tatang Sulaiman, chief of the army in Aceh province, said at least 97 died in the magnitude-6.5 quake that hit before dawn Wednesday, while four people had been pulled from the rubble alive. The Indonesian government declared a two-week emergency period in Aceh and some aid was already reaching hard-hit areas.

The rescue effort involving thousands of search officials, villagers, soldiers and police is concentrated on Meureudu, a severely affected town in Pidie Jaya district near the epicenter. Excavators and rescue teams removed debris from shop houses and other buildings where people were believed buried.

TV footage showed rescuers in orange uniforms shining flashlights into the interiors of broken buildings as they searched for signs of life. The pace of the search slowed after night fall, hampered by rain and blackouts.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was centered about 19 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Sigli, a town near the northern tip of Sumatra, at a depth of 17 kilometers (11 miles). The agency had initially placed the epicenter undersea. It did not generate a tsunami.

Siti Rukiah, 51, a mother of four, was among the many people taking refuge in local mosques. She and about 100 other people from Pante Raja, a seaside village in Pidie Jaya district, fled to Nur Abdullah mosque located on higher ground in a nearby hamlet.

She said the quake was shallow and felt so powerful she had to grab onto a table to keep from falling down. She was sure a tsunami was coming.

“I’m really scared about a tsunami,” said Rukiah, whose brother and neighbors died in the 2004 disaster. “I don’t want to return home tonight, not only because my house is damaged, but I am still afraid an aftershock could cause a tsunami.”

Aceh’s disaster mitigation agency said more than 600 people were injured. The national disaster agency said about 245 buildings were seriously damaged or destroyed in Pidie Jaya and neighboring Bireuen district, including 14 mosques. The rest were mainly dwellings and shop houses. Roads also cracked and power poles toppled over.

The world’s largest archipelago, Indonesia is prone to earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. The 2004 quake and tsunami killed a total of 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Aceh.

John Ebel, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Boston College, said there is a risk of aftershocks that even if relatively weak could cause further damage to buildings, particularly because modern building codes aren’t consistently enforced in Indonesia.

In the capital, Jakarta, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said he had ordered all government agencies to take part in the rescue efforts for Aceh, a conservative Muslim province that has considerable autonomy from the central government under a peace deal with separatists.

Aiyub Abbas, the chief of Pidie Jaya district, said there was urgent need for emergency supplies.

Zunaidi, a village chief in Pidie Jaya, said about 1,700 people from the village moved to a temporary shelter at an Islamic boarding school about 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of Meureudu town.

He said most took shelter because they feared aftershocks could knock down their houses that were partially damaged.

“We are still afraid to return home because of aftershocks, downpours and blackouts,” said Zunaidi, who goes by a single name. The boarding school was providing generators, food and medicine, but people complained of a lack of clean water and baby food, he said.

The Indonesian Red Cross deployed emergency response teams and advertised bank accounts for donations. Its head of disaster management, Arifin Hadi, said five water trucks had been sent into the quake area. Aid, including hygiene kits, tarpaulins, jerry cans, blankets and family assistance kits, is being distributed, with more to be sent from Jakarta, he said. The International Organization for Migration sent an assessment team to Aceh.

The general hospital in Pidie Jaya was overwhelmed with the numbers of injured and many people were being treated in tents pitched on its grounds, according to its director Muhammad Reza Faisal. He said five of the quake victims died at the hospital.

Villager Ahmad Salam said he and his family couldn’t sleep in their house because its roof was damaged and rain was pouring in. The family went to the same mosque they took shelter in after the 2004 disaster.

“Even after 12 years, it feels like yesterday that the tsunami washed away my house,” Salman said.